under another topic someone wrote something about 0dark30 being a film about american problems, american people,blablabla... hence a movie for americans... i (not american) was thinking about watching it but would like to hear other people´s opinion on that one. of course it is an american movie focusing on american problems but can it still be an entertaining two and a half hours for someone who just knows about 9/11, war in the middle east and guantanamo from school or the media? a lot of war movies obviously have this patriotic touch in it. that´s totally fine to a certain extent. i just don´t want to watch a military propaganda film camouflaged as a cia-thriller. another thing i´d like to avoid is some cheesy america-is-the-best-of-the-world-attitude a la independence day (the presidents´ speech at the end was just awful....)
Or is it, as i hoped since i heard that this movie is going to be made, just a thriller about the decade it took to catch bin laden?
i hope that you (american or not) guys who already watched it could give me short description regarding my questions.
It wasn't the director's job to convince you. The film has absolutely zero interest in trying to tell you anything about what you should feel about Bin Laden. It doesn't care and it doesn't need to. It's a film primarily focused on a cold, singularly focused character who thinks of nothing else for ten years but killing this man. And it doesn't even bother to spend much time showing you why beyond telling you that Maya is American. It doesn't tell you either that she's supposed to represent all Americans. While I don't think Zero Dark Thirty is as great as some critics are saying, I still think it's pretty good. Look, I would absolutely hate this movie if it was another "America F-Yeah, Oorah, high-fiving jingoistic piece of conservative nationalistic nonsense about how awesome America is for killing Bin Laden. I'm American and I absolutely despise that crap. This film doesn't tell you how to feel about torture or about invading a house and shooting people, evil though they may be, in front of their children. People should already know how they feel about those things.
It actually does a very admirable job of staying non-biased, considering the subject matter. While there is a lot of controversy being drummed up by politicians about this "pro-torture" they feel the film is portraying, I didn't see any of that at all. One could argue that the torturing stopped the investigation from progressing, because the info collected wasn't being analyzed properly. It's almost documentary-like in it's ability to show tough, possibly-true events but not offer a sense of whether what these characters are doing is right or wrong. It's up to the viewers' beliefs if they are okay with a government working this way and if the ends justify the means. Your views of America or the Mid-East won't play much into what you see in this film - unless you're just naturally passionate one or the other already.
As for your hopes of looking for an "entertaining two and a half hours," I'd have to warn that this is a tough film to sit through. It's very, very good, but not repeat-watching, popcorn entertainment like "The Avengers". It honors the subject matter completely, and doesn't play down for mass audiences.